


all that scarcity promotes (is desperate men and tyrants)

by toomanyhometowns



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, Guilt, Recovery One, not that South is going to acknowledge it as guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26445811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomanyhometowns/pseuds/toomanyhometowns
Summary: It's North's turn with the goddamn motion tracker, and he doesn't set the fucking thing and winds up dead with South an absolute maximum of twenty metres away.
Kudos: 2
Collections: tumblrfic exodus





	all that scarcity promotes (is desperate men and tyrants)

**Author's Note:**

> It is the time of Quar where I upload fic I wrote years ago. I also have no idea if the chronology within this story makes sense but I'm going to trust my past self... Title tweaked slightly from Dessa's [Beekeeper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv1DT94it8I), lyrics [here](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/dessa/thebeekeeper.html).

It's North's turn with the goddamn motion tracker, and he doesn't set the fucking thing and winds up dead with South an absolute maximum of twenty metres away.

There's the scream and Wash telling her North's dead, and a shaking, surreal minute staring at his visor grasping for a feeling, any feeling.

This is what she comes up with: she feels burnt, she feels hollow, she feels reduced. (Somewhere far below the stratum of conscious thought, she feels something not unlike relief.)

Then there's the gunshot and Wash telling her that she's dead, and South needs a cigarette.

She quit smoking when she was twenty, when she made up her mind to enlist. No matter how much genetic engineering and chemistry magic the companies performed, burning tobacco and breathing it in was never going to be good for your lung capacity; South didn't want to risk crapping out halfway through basic because she was wheezy. For years after the decision, she'd pretend the deep breath she was taking was a puff, she'd will her tongue to taste the smoke and her muscles to feel alive. She'd bum cigarettes, because if you don't buy them, they don't count.

"Go," Wash says.

"No."

North quit with her when he was twenty, too. He also quit when he was eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-six, and thirty. _You know me_ , he'd said and fuck, did she ever. _I never give up for good._

" _Ten_ seconds," Delta's saying, and Wash makes a crack that years ago, she'd've punched him for.

 _That shit's bad for you_ , he said when she tried some of Georgia's chew to slake a craving she'd gotten from the smell of smoke on North's civvies. They played war games with the sim troopers and he'd be the sniper and she'd be the scout, and they'd pretend the roles didn't suit them. After all, everyone knew she was the brash one, he was the thoughtful one; she was the reckless one, he was the cool-headed one; she was the cocky one, he was the one who sawed a man in half with a repeating laser rifle. _Switch, on my mark._

And North's armour detonates. South has a good air filter so she can't smell anything, and her visor's tinted so she can see one of North's greaves go flying in the glare of the explosion. She breathes deep.

Wash steers her out of there because he's the one with a mission, and Recovery Two lets him, because she's got one of those, too.


End file.
